


What is Past and What is Present

by Saku777



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: M/M, some spamano hints
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-30
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-11-21 12:41:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11357721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saku777/pseuds/Saku777
Summary: A drabble for aph Romano week 2017 prompt 1 dreams





	What is Past and What is Present

As the clock struck midnight and the new year began Romano quickly began eating his lentils, while wearing his red boxers underneath his clothes of course. As he ate he reflected on all he had to do. He still had to set fireworks and hopefully not get his fingers blown up this time, he also still had to drink and call Spain complaining that the other man was late once more. He stared at his clunky, now outdated old phone and scoffed. Despite everything, despite knowing that this would likely happen he still felt disappointed. Spain wasn’t there. “I’m so fucking stupid,” he said right before he shoved another spoonful of the warm savory-rich brown lentils into his mouth. “He hates me dammit, of course he wouldn’t fucking come. I might as well lock the goddamn door cause everything is ruined.” He didn’t lock the door though and the night wasn’t ruined, because despite everything he continued eating his lentils and then said, “No, I ain’t gonna give him the satisfaction. I’m gonna do whatever I feel like doing, screw him.” 

As he ate and watched the year pass from 2016 to 2017 his mind drifted from angrily musing on Spain and his flakiness to other matters that had occurred to him before. It was 2017. A hundred years ago it had been 1917 and the first world war had ended, and two hundred years before that it had been 1817 and an earthquake had struck his beloved Palermo causing him and his people grief. Romano had been alive to see it all. In those short two hundred years so much had happened, so much had changed. Yes Romano knew things changed and happened beforehand, but somehow it was different those past two centuries. “Hmpf, it’s been a fucking shitshow,” he said to himself. in the early 1800′s he had been younger, both different and yet the same.

Romano reflected, as he shoveled more lentils into his hungry eager mouth, that he was once called the Kingdom of Two Sicilies. In that far away time Naples had been his capital. He remembered poverty and ignorance, but he also remembered wealth, railroads being built, people flocking from abroad to see his cities and visit his sights. He remembered the beautiful seaside and his people, despite everything staying by his side. He remembered his feelings of anger and resentment at the poverty of his people, but also odd feelings of solidarity he sometimes felt with his monarch when he mingled along with them. His younger self was an embarrassment, but also brought him a feeling of regret. Young Romano, though sometimes grumpy, resentful, and often difficult and hard to love was more energetic, excitable, and was even a good deal more hopeful in some senses. His past had been hard, grating, and difficult, but in the glitter of what was called paradise on earth in those days he was filled with a odd kind of dreaming and romanticism. 

“See Naples and die my ass, they say that now but for fucking different reasons, tch!” he muttered. Back then people had said that because they said he was beautiful, because they said his Naples was heaven on earth. Yes a heaven inhabited by devils, little devils like Romano, but it was something. Now people just pointed at Naples at scorn, scorn at it’s poverty, at it’s trash problems, at it’s Mafia. In the years he had been alive that re-kindled dreaming of his teenage years had fallen apart and been replaced by an increased cynicism, anger, bitterness, and apathy. “I was always shit,”Romano mused. “Now ‘m even more of a piece of shit than before. That’s why that bastard’s fucking late.” Unification had not been what was promised to him, only continued and even increased poverty and illness followed. His people fled him and then the Mafia filled the gaps that his brother and their government failed to provide. Then they too leeched him and his people dry, killed off his children, killed off his and their hopes and dreams. Death surrounded him, in both his past and in his present and Romano thought of toxic dirt around Naples, inflecting him and infecting his people. He thought of the lost chances, the lost people, the lost hope.

By now his lentils were done, his belly full, and he stared at the empty bowl, yet still there as a gnawing deep in his stomach and a dull feeling in his heart. Politics had done him no good either, the Mafia inflected it as well with it’s hideous sickness. He saw no faith in his leaders, none at all. As he continued thinking a firework burst outside. It lit up the sky with a bright beam of tomato cherry red and a huge boom of an explosion. The sound and color shook Romano from his revere. He quickly went outside and saw that it was time to set off his own fireworks. The sullenness was briefly chased from his mind as he rushed inside to grab them all, along with several matches. After a few minutes shuffling around his cluttered house looking too and fro he found them all and almost tripping over himself, he went outside. His heart was beating wildly, for he loved and adored fireworks. Even with Spain not there he was still eager to see them, though the thought brought a melancholy back to his heart. He sighed as he set the first firework up and lit it, quickly backing away afterwards. As the fire engulfed and lit it up it shot straight up into the air, exploding in a fiery inferno of orange and red.

As he saw the colors intermingle with the wine-night sky Romano again thought of his people. They were the only things that kept what small dreams he had alive even though they were mostly dead. Romano lived in the moment and day by day. He never planned for the future or entertained much hope, but whenever they acted out of love for him, whenever they combated the evils and illnesses that haunted him and made him feel death inside at all times, whenever they did thus, they once again gave his heart a tiny bit of a dream back. It was never enough to stay there for good, but it was enough to make him proud and happy. That was all he could ask for in the end. 

The colors were gone by now and Romano went to light up a second firework, but before he could do so he heard a sheepish laugh behind him. Turning around rapidly he saw Spain standing right there, looking a little ashamed and apologetic. “Sorry I’m late Roma. I overslept…but I got here as soon as I could! I see you’re lightin’ fireworks, I’m pretty glad I didn’t miss it!” Romano scowled, though he was more pleased than angry, and said, “You jerk, you missed eating lentils with me!” Spain now looked worried and said, “Ah! Tell me you still have room for the grapes! I brought ‘em like I said I would…” Romano glanced at the bag of grapes Spain held in his hand, then he looked at Spain. “Hmpf! You’re lucky I didn’t eat that much…yeah I got room for ém…and you better make it up to me too. I mean the being late shit.” Spain’s mouth opened and then shut, feeling unsure if he should be happy or worried. “But how? I just overslept a bit, it wasn’t nothin’ much. But I’ll hear you out.” Romano then looked away from Spain and tossed him the pack of matches. “…Make it up to me by helping me light the fireworks or else, you jackass.” Spain smiled, he knew for sure Romano wasn’t angry now. “You bet! I’ll light this big one up right here!” Romano nodded and just pretended he was still put off. Perhaps he thought, even if big dreams were impossible for him, even if his hopes couldn’t be fulfilled, perhaps at least small dreams could still come true.

**Author's Note:**

> If I do the other prompts I may upload them here but it's up in the air atm


End file.
